Your Guide to Creating a Marketing Plan for Quarter Four | 141
Quarter four has to be one of the toughest seasons in business. Not only is it jam-packed with sales, but you have to balance your holiday time with generating income. This is where creating a marketing plan is essential!
When you have a digital marketing plan, you can plan for those busy seasons and enjoy your holidays.
Before You Create a Marketing Plan
Before I jump into creating a quarterly marketing plan, I want to start with a disclaimer. Three months sounds like a long time, but when you're in the midst of it, it’s never enough time. All that is to say, marketing is about the long game.
Quick wins aren’t the solution to stable business, even if they feel good in the moment. With quarter four, a lot of us have started to stress. We think about all the goals we didn’t quite meet, but running to the finish line won’t help.
Most customers go through the buyer’s journey over a three to six month period, meaning a lot of the action items you put into place now will benefit you at the start of next year - not necessarily in the moment.
Creating a Marketing Plan for Quarter Four
Let’s dive into the things you need to consider and brainstorm as you create your quarterly marketing plan.
#1 Types of Content
Marketing has a lot of layers to you. You can’t just sell or just nurture, but it’s easy to focus on one side of things. When creating your marketing plan, you need to have a good mix of content that does three things: builds your list, nurtures and builds brand awareness, and generates sales.
For example, you may plan ad campaigns, create Pinterest Pins, and post on social media to grow your list. Then your email provides nurture and sales generation. So on and so forth. Think about how you can utilize your current channels to accomplish those three goals.
#2 Tailor Your Messaging
As the year goes on and the seasons change, people are likely to experience different desires and pain points. For example, a teacher at the beginning of the year might feel overwhelmed with teaching a new subject area, but in quarter four, she is worried about students forgetting knowledge during holiday breaks.
You want to shift your messaging in quarter four to focus on these shifts in your audience. Think about how you can tailor your freebie, content, and offers to meet the specific needs during quarter four.
#3 Time vs. Money Investment
As I mentioned, quarter four comes with a lot of balancing for you as a business owner. You might have kids at home, vacation plans, or just want some time off. With each season of business, you also have to evaluate your time vs. money investment.
As you create your marketing plan, you need to decide how you’ll get it done. If you have upcoming launches, holidays, or sales, who is creating that content? Writing those emails? Prepping your store? Are you putting in the time, will you hire help, or find a way to short-cut your time?
Want more tips on how to navigate the busy sales season of quarter four? Check out episode 97 on holiday marketing (and how to avoid slamming the breaks on business).
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
We're going to talk about creating your fall marketing plan and how to do that so that you can finish the year off successful. And really the four tips that I have for you today are something that you can take into consideration and help you plan your marketing at really like any time, but we're just going to talk about it with like a fall Twist, if you will.
So like you can take these tips and make those considerations for spring or summer, whatever it might be. So the four tips are playing a long game. Two is the layers to your marketing plan. Three is tailoring your message. and or offers to the time of year. And then number four is considering the time versus money investment equation.
Let's jump in to tip number one, which is playing the long game. So we have to remember that our businesses are a long A game's the wrong word, but it's more like a marathon, not a sprint. There's lots of little sprints within it, but you really need to remember that this is a marathon, that you are going to hopefully, if you're designing the kind of business that is creating a legacy, and by legacy, I don't necessarily mean that like you're becoming Martha Stewart and you have the Martha Stewart home line and everyone knows your name.
But legacy is just something like you're passing down to your family. If that's the kind of business that is making a difference to future generations and making an impact on your family today and future generations, then we need to make decisions that impact us positively for the long run and not necessarily just for today.
So quick wins are not going to be the solution to a stable business, even if they feel good now. And there are some times when we need a quick win or we need a Band Aid solution, if you will, but as long as we understand and know that that decision that we're making is a short term fix while we work on the long term solution.
So, for example, this could be. Something like hiring a VA in your business to do a very specific task, create the thumbnails or update descriptions, whereas the long term solution might be that task of creating the thumbnails is part of someone else's position, but just right now you don't have that other person.
And so you need the thumbnails to get updated now, and you need to keep creating thumbnails for your new products. And so in the interim, you're going to hire a VA who can work on that, but long term solution, maybe you're going to be hiring a marketing director or a creative director or something like that, who can take over that as well as other different pieces of the puzzle.
That's kind of like the quick fix with a long term solution. Attached to it. So for me in my business, creating Facebook ads, something that I do on a regular basis is write ad copy. And so me writing the ad copy is my current situation. And I like writing ad copy. I think I'm pretty decent at it, but I'm also not by any means a conversion Copywriter.
And so long term, the goal is to hire that out so that I can be more in the strategy and I can be more in the numbers because that's where my brain really, really works well. And so hiring that out as a long term solution. But right now we're sticking with the quick fix. But just knowing that if you're like quick fix, have a quick fix, have a quick fix with fix without those long term solutions, eventually they start to fall apart.
The other piece to playing the long game is understanding buying cycles. They are getting longer. There is a lack of trust in The online space and I've talked about this so many times before in lives on Facebook and podcast. By the way, hello, if you're listening to the replay on the podcast, I forgot to mention that at the beginning of the episode, but hello to podcast listeners.
But I've talked about this multiple times before. Buying cycles are getting longer and what that means is from when someone learns about you or about your product, it is taking 3 to 6 to 12 months for them to pull the trigger because they really need to know that they can trust you and that you are going to be able to do what you say you're going to do and that you're going to be able to make a difference in the way that they need you to and the way that you are promising to make that difference.
Knowing that buying cycles are getting longer means that we have to really prioritize nurturing our audience, building relationships with our audience, and connecting on a deeper level with our audience so that when they are ready to buy, you're the person that they immediately think of because they have that relationship with you.
They implicitly trust you. And so when someone's ready for Facebook ads, they go, Oh. It's Cynthia. I listen to her podcast every single week. She knows what she's talking about when it comes to ads. Definitely going to go with her. But everyone who comes into my world and everyone who's listening to my podcast is not necessarily ready for ads yet, but we still need to provide that content.
I'm still providing the podcast for any, like it's free for everybody. partially because I love to talk for hours at a time. So that's a big piece of it. And I know that like freebie seekers get a lot of hate, but those people are there in your audience, soaking in your knowledge. And when they are ready to make the purchase to take the plunge, if you've been building that relationship, connecting with them and really embracing them.
They'll know exactly who to buy from. People are going to sit on your email list. They're going to interact with you for six or more months on average. Obviously there'll be people who meet you and then the next day or like an in, but on average it's going to be six or more months before they buy. So as long as you're ready for it, it's fine.
Step number two are the layers to your marketing plan. These are the goals that everything in your marketing needs to come back to. So there's three of them. Your first goal is building brand awareness and nurturing. The second one is building your email list. And then the third one is making sales.
Everything that you're doing is, should be able to be tied to one of those goals. So, doing this Facebook Live slash eventual podcast episode is a nurture, it's a piece of nurture content. There's no pitch at the end, I'm not selling anything, you don't need to sign up to get this information. It's really just like, here's the information.
I want to share it with you so that you can really have this strong foundation for your fall marketing plan. If you have a webinar or some sort of video series training where you're pitching something at the end, that is nurture, but your primary goal there is sales. Typically, if you have a webinar or something like that too, there's a list building component to it.
So you're getting new people onto your email list of these three goals, nurture slash brand awareness, list building and sales. My number one is always list building. I always prioritize list building over everything else. I think that it's so, so important to be sending your free opt in out into the world, whether it's on Pinterest or Tik Toks that you're recording slash reels, whether you're using Facebook ads, you're putting it into new Facebook groups, however you're getting it out into the world.
Getting new people consistently joining your email list is very, very important. Because then your long form content like a podcast or a blog and your emails that you're sending out consistently will be nurturing them so that when you do go into some sort of sales period, a launch, Black Friday, your birthday event, whatever it might be, these people who have been joining your list over the past 369 months and getting nurtured on a consistent basis are then ready to buy. And so that's why I prioritize list building because someone who's on your email list is a warmer lead than someone who is not. I use the word consistently multiple times in that little rant that I just did. When it comes to creating long form content to your blog or your podcast, you need to do it consistently.
When you're emailing your list, you also should be doing that consistently. The minimum that I would recommend is at least once a month, one piece of long form content and one email every single month is my minimum. Ideally, you're doing both every single week. And if you're like, Jenzea, there's no way I can do a piece of content and an email every single week.
I totally understand. Two things. Number one, build up to it. So you can start with one blog post and one email every month and then build up to. Every other week and then build up to every single week. If you start slow, then you'll get the process and the procedures of how you're going to write that blog post or how you're going to record your podcast down.
And then once you have that understanding and there's a flow to your work, it just becomes a lot easier to do it more frequently. When you're first starting out, you're like, how do I plug in this mic? Like, where does it go? And you're just trying to figure everything out. So it can be really overwhelming.
And to try and have to do that every single week can be a lot. So if weekly is not on the game table, it's not on the, in the cards for you, then once a month would be the minimum. And then I do, I like to alternate. So if you're doing one email and one blog post a month, I would say like week one. Email, week three, blog post, week one, email, week three, blog post.
So you're like week on, week off, week on, week off. And so every other week, your people are getting something from you. Once you're able to move to two blog posts or two pieces of long form content a month and two emails a month, I would say week one is email, week two is blog, week three is email, week four is blog.
And then we just repeat. So every other week. You're doing something different. People are hearing from you every single week, but you're not having to do both every week. And then of course, once you get up to weekly, it would be like a podcast every week and an email every week. Hey, Jenzea here. I am interrupting myself mid episode just to let you know about my Free guide, three elements to a complete comprehensive marketing plan.
If you've been here a while, you know that I love Facebook ads, but I also think that they need to be part of a bigger strategy. And so to help you out, I created this guide that has the three elements of a complete holistic marketing strategy. And you can download this guide for free at marketscalegrow.com/holisticguide. I'm super excited about it. It has tons of questions to support you. 30 plus ways that you can get started right away. And it's just a must have in marketing your business in 2023. So download it now. And then let's hop back in to the episode.
If you know anything about my story, I started my podcast. And I was dead set on it being every single week. I didn't start doing the blog post show notes for like three months. And then I didn't start emailing for another two months. So I was putting out a weekly podcast for about five months before I started emailing my list.
And that just gave me the time to get the systems and procedures in place. So that when I did start emailing my list, I felt confident that I could continue to put those podcasts out every single week. So that's another way you can do it. Instead of trying to do everything all at once, immediately pick one, get it going consistently.
Once you're confident that you can stack something else on top, add something else in. You shouldn't be podcast and then having to shift email, shift the email away podcast. Like I want to be able to stack. I hope that that makes sense. Let's move on to tip number three, and that is tailoring your message and or your offer for the time of year.
I don't want you to misunderstand this of like create a new offer. Especially if your primary focus is a course, group coaching program, a mastermind, a one on one service, or some sort of coaching package, if it is a bigger ticket item, and by that I mean like 500 or more, you don't want to be recreating something new.
If you are thinking about like a freebie, a list builder, you might want to switch that out every month. So let's first talk about your actual offer, the thing you're selling, assuming that it is at least 500 or more. If that's the case, it's your messaging that you're going to be going through and thinking about at this time of year in the fall, what do people need to hear from me?
What are they, what is going on in their classroom or their business or their home life? What does fall look like? So, for example, it's Right now, September 20th, I just went my, you know, where I live in Ontario. We just went back to school the Tuesday after Labor Day. So we are in the middle of week three of the school year.
So I know people in my area, moms are very overwhelmed from all the back to school. There is a lot of exhaustion happening because Back to school is very tiring. This isn't the first year I, my son is now in school. So I'm full on living the mom exhaustion. For teachers, they're also in the throes of back to school.
They're still building relationships with their classroom. They're still setting up routines and procedures and practicing those. And hopefully they've settled into something in week 3. But there's still a lot of teachers that their classrooms, there's a lot of energy and a lot of movement and things are a little bit hectic still.
And so we're just like settling in. And businesses there's a bit of a crunch at this time of year of like, are we going to hit our numbers for the end of the year? Like what is happening between now and the end of the year? How are we going to make it happen? So there's a big push that kind of happens and renewed energy in September.
A lot of people take time off in the summer. So they're coming back to a business. They're coming back to work. Those are kind of like three different things. Um, spots people might be in, you need to just think about your specific audience. What are the specific needs, challenges, things that they could be going through and how can you tailor your messaging?
How can you speak more directly to the exact struggles, the exact problems that your audience is going through in this moment? If we're talking about like a freebie, an opt in. And this is especially relevant if your target market is classroom teachers because the it's very, very easy to tailor your freebie based on a classroom needs during different seasons.
So there's like back to school season and then we can get into fall energy. I have a client. We just wrapped up her back to school promotion. We were growing her list with some free morning work for the beginning of the year. And now we've moved into her Halloween promo. Once Halloween promo's done, we'll move into her Black Friday promo.
And then once Black Friday promo's done, she has a holiday 10 day giveaway that we'll probably move into, right? So there's different freebies. That we move through throughout the year based on the needs of teachers, the contents of those freebies. She's looked at the scope and sequence of the teachers who teach her the subject that she focuses on.
And she said, okay, at the beginning of the year, these are the topics and the. the concepts that they would probably be teaching. And then close to Halloween, we might have moved into this. And then for Black Friday, we're going to move into that. And then by like the holiday season, teachers are going to be needing these kinds of things for me.
And so we're able to tailor the freebies to the season as well. So if you're thinking about your freebie, again, think about the challenges and needs of your audience. But also, especially if it's classroom teacher, like, what are they teaching right now? What struggles do they have at this specific time of year?
Moms would be another one, right? Like different struggles they might be going through at different times of year. And then again, also business owners, like I said before, at this Like in September, there's that crunch that's starting to happen. We're getting so close to Q4. People are saying like, Oh, we're not hitting our goals or Oh, we are hitting our goals or whatever might be happening.
And so that can make a huge impact, of course, on what freebies they're looking for. And you don't, if you have a webinar, you don't have to restart from scratch. You can just change the packaging on it. You can just change the messaging that's surrounding it. Pulling out different key points that would entice someone based on the time of year change the title of the webinar.
I have a different client. She has a classroom management webinar. We need to be thinking about an improving classroom management at all times of the year. But how we're going to speak to a teacher for back to school season with classroom management versus in November versus in February is going to be different, and so instead of scrapping the entire webinar and saying, Oh, we don't need classroom management anymore, let's record a new one.
We can just change how we're speaking about classroom management so that when the new year and like new year reset kind of comes, the messaging and the packaging on the exact same webinar has changed so that people are like, Oh yeah, I need that. Point number four is balancing the time versus money investment.
So in this season, right now, what are you putting into your business? And you need to think about like, what do you have coming up? There's holidays. Do you have any launches? Do you have a specific sale that's coming up? And sometimes we're going to be investing a lot of time into our business. and putting a lot of energy into our business.
And then other times it's more money that we're putting in. And so considering the season you're in, what you're going through, is this a season of time investment or is this a season of money investment and different tasks you're going to have different answers for. I went through a full season, probably close to two years, where I edited my own podcast.
I put that time investment in. We are now in a season. Of money investment, I pay lovely, lovely Britney. Thank you so much to edit this podcast for me. And so there's different times, different seasons, different requirements based on where you are. It's also good to think about who are you collaborating with in this season?
This is of course, a time investment because you have to put the time into that collaboration. But I do honestly recommend that pretty much everyone do more collaborations. There is very few downsides to collaborating with people, especially if they are a good fit with what their niche is and who their audience is and if it fits well with yours.
So it's never a bad idea to be doing those collaborations because it helps to cross pollinate both audiences. Your audience learns more about that person, their audience learns more about you, and it's typically beneficial to everybody. And then in this season, this is my last question for you. What money investments are good for you?
Are you looking to start running ads so that you can continue building your list without having to post on social every single day yourself? Are you looking to hire a VA or a Facebook ad strategist or someone else to support your business? And what about software? One of the best investments that I made is Depsado, which is a client management software.
And it does all of my invoicing. It does all of my onboarding emails are just automatically sent out. It was a great investment and totally worth the money that I spend on it. So thinking about like, where are the, some of the holes that you're struggling with and what money investments could you make to fill those gaps in this season?
Okay, so just a quick recap before we wrap this up, the four tips that I went over today to pull your fall marketing together and really end 2023 on a high. Number one is remember you are playing a long game. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So making choices today that are going to really empower you in the long run.
Number two, we talked about the layers of marketing and how everything that you do in your business, all of the marketing that you do in your business should be either increasing your brand awareness or nurturing. It should be building your list, or it should be making more sales. Those are your three marketing goals, brand awareness and nurture, list building, sales.
Number three that we talked about was tailoring either your messaging or your offer, but not really your actual offer unless it's a freebie, mostly your messaging, so that it's truly, truly, truly speaking to your audience at this time of year, what exact challenges and struggles they're currently going through.
And then the fourth thing we talked about is the time versus money investment. And how in this season are you investing your time into your business? And how in this season are you investing your money? Are your current investments serving you well? I didn't actually mention that, but like evaluating back to the podcast.
Evaluating is having someone edit my podcast the right decision for this season and hands down. Absolutely. Yes, that is not something that I want to do the time investment for in this season. There might be a new season that has a new answer. And so every season you need to evaluate those time and money investments to make sure that it is still the right one for your business.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!